AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY: EXTERNAL THREATS, INTERNAL POLITICS

This is the first in a SERIES on how American Politics always
involves interactions between several “levels”: national,
supranational, and subnational. Here the topic is how the
executive branch reconciles external and internal demands when
choosing a type of Grand Strategy.

A correct model of national states regards them as facing
challenges from both their supranational and subnational
environments (international society and domestic society).
Nevertheless, much analysis of international politics and foreign
policy has proceeded entirely in terms of the external relations
between powers and the external exigencies that states face. Some
authors did address internal “domestic determinants” of foreign
policy, but then they tended to leave out the external side.

Accordingly it is a truly fine accomplishment of Peter Trubowitz
2011 Politics and strategy to combine external and internal factors
into a single model. This is how national leaders actually must
face reality: they must respond to both external and internal
challenges, and they must respond adequately to both or suffer
costs, potentially including both external and internal defeat
(losing a war and losing an election). Observers who need to
interpret the foreign behavior of any country should do this kind
of analysis.

A main point of such analysis, for any country, is that external
behavior does not result simply from structural characteristics of
a country such as its relative power, historical grand
strategy,

level of development, nationalist sentiments, or whatever.
Instead, the external behavior that leaders choose varies with
changes in both external and internal environments.

Trubowitz uses the USA as his example, showing that it was not
always “isolationist” or “imperialist.” Nor did it progress in some
structurally determined way from isolationist to imperialist. The
USA has had different kinds of grand strategies throughout its
history, depending on the exact external geopolitics and internal
politics that national leaders faced.

An interesting upshot of Trubowitz’s analysis is that, because
for much of its history the USA has been relatively secure
geopolitically, American national leaders have often been able to
choose whether to engage with their external environments or not.
Of course, a sudden drastic geopolitical threat would demand their
attention. Otherwise, presidents could decide whether it was to
their domestic political advantage to make foreign policy a
priority or not.

Trubowitz predicts only the general type of grand strategy that
is likely under given external and internal circumstances. Those
circumstances are sufficient to constrain national leaders to one
general type of grand strategy or another, but not sufficient to
determine the specific grand strategy within that general type that
national leaders will choose. Specific grand strategy is influenced
by many specific factors that a very general model cannot
include.

Thus each of the four general types of grand strategy contains
many specific grand strategies (figure 2.1, page 15).

<> The ambitious and expensive type of grand
strategy (to change external relations by using many internal
resources) includes specific grand strategies such as imperialism,
wars of conquest, and establishing spheres of influence.

<> The ambitious and cheap type of grand strategy
(to change external relations using few internal resources)
includes specific grand strategies such as blackmail, subversion,
and “binding” lesser powers to oneself (all “underhanded” or
devious).

<> The modest and cheap type of grand strategy
(to preserve external relations by using few internal resources)
includes specific grand strategies such as appeasement, balancing
other powers against each other (“external balancing”), and passing
responsibility on to other powers (“buckpassing”).

<> The modest and expensive type of grand
strategy (to preserve external relations by using many internal
resources) includes specific grand strategies such as internal
mobilization of resources (“internal balancing”) and external
preemptive war.

Trubowitz’ second step is to construct a model of how national
leaders choose a general type of grand strategy (16-37). There are
two main dimensions. The external environment can be either
threatening or non threatening. The internal environment –
specifically the domestic coalition on which the national leader
depends for political support – can support or oppose expending
resources on external action. Thus, in order to predict which type
of grand strategy national leaders are likely to attempt, analysts
must answer the following questions: Is the external environment
quite threatening, requiring that, ideally, leaders and nation
respond? Or is it not threatening, allowing national leaders much
geopolitical “slack” to choose between ambitious and modest
external goals? Is the internal coalition on which national
leaders rely for political support willing to expend internal
resources on external defense (“guns”)? Or would that coalition
prefer instead to concentrate internal resources on internal
consumption (“butter”)?

The answers to these questions largely determine what general
type of grand strategy national leaders will choose, though again
not the specific grand strategy (figure 2.2, page 31).

<> A threatening external environment and
defense-oriented internal coalition imply specific grand
strategies of mobilizing for war or even conducting defensive war,
often “wars of necessity.” Trubowitz labels this type “balancing,”
here for clarity we call it “PERFORMING” adequately in
geopolitics.

<> A threatening external environment and
domestically-oriented internal coalition imply specific grand
strategies – appeasement, external balancing, buckpassing – that
rely on what we will call “diplomacy of necessity”: that is, having
to make do with diplomacy because military options are not
available. Trubowitz calls this type “satisficing,” here for
clarity we call it “BARELY PERFORMING” in geopolitics.

<> An unthreatening external environment and
defense-oriented internal coalition allows the options of
specific grand strategies such as imperialism and wars of conquest,
always “wars of choice.” Trubowitz calls this type “expansionism,”
here for consistency we call it “OVER-PERFORMING” in
geopolitics.

<> Finally, an unthreatening external environment and
a domestically-oriented coalition allows the options of
specific grand strategies such as retrenchment or isolationism.
Trubowitz calls this type “underextension,” here for consistency we
call it “UNDER-PERFORMING” in geopolitics, relative to what one’s
power permits.

We now note some appearances of these four general types of
grand strategy in American history. Please note that our
presentation is NOT chronological. Some accounts of the history of
American foreign policy assume that, for most of American history,
American grand strategy was, for example, “isolationist” and only
during World War II became “expansionist.” In fact, in all periods
of American history, American leaders have resorted to quite
different types of grand strategy. It is true that, between about
1800 and 1900, the United States only gradually achieved enough
power to challenge Great Britain (which it then did not do) or to
project power beyond North and South America (as, gradually, it did
do in East Asia). Nevertheless, even between 1800 and1900, USA
grand strategy was often highly expansionist, albeit mostly within
North America: against Native Americans everywhere, against Spain
in Florida, against Canada in New York, and against relatively weak
Mexico in the Southwest. Moreover, American grand strategy was not
always automatically successful or even automatically in what an
outside observer might consider “the national interest.” For
example – in addition to having challenged the British in the
1776-1783 War of Independence – the US again challenged the UK in
the War of 1812: imprudently and disastrously, mostly because of
domestic politics.

PERFORMING: WAR OF NECESSITY

If the external environment is quite threatening, and the
internal environment supports external action, grand strategy is
likely to be robust: leaders mobilize the nation against foreign
enemies, the whole country doing its best to perform adequately
relative to objective geopolitical challenge. The classic example
in American history is the American response to the 1941 Japanese
attack on the American navy in Hawaii. Amid instant public outrage,
the USA immediately declared war on Japan and mobilized for total
victory. Because 1941 was the only time that a major power
directly and suddenly attacked the USA, arguably 1941 is the main
example of such robust and immediate response.

Nevertheless, another major example of fundamental challenge and
sustained response was the 1950-1990 Cold War. The Soviet Union
certainly was hostile to the United States, with comparable
capacities for destruction. The public certainly supported a
response to “communist threat,” and industrial interests gradually
formed a (congressional)-“military-industrial” complex that gained
economic benefits from national spending on defense. The main break
in public support came only when American forces became bogged down
fighting a country that did not pose much threat to the USA, 1960s
Vietnam.

OVER-PERFORMING: WAR OF CHOICE

If the external environment is not threatening, national leaders
have a choice of whether to pursue ambitious or modest grand
strategies, probably depending on whether the internal environment
supports external action or not. If the internal coalition thrives
on national appropriations for military “defense,” responses are
likely to be robust – “over-performing” relative to objective
geopolitical challenge.

An example is Bush’s early 2000s response to the 2001 terrorist
attack on New York and Washington. To be sure, that was an attack
that required some response. But overall, after the fall of the
Soviet Union, the USA remained basically quite secure. Bush could
have chosen a modest response, narrowly targeted on the terrorist
networks that had conducted the 9/11 attack. Instead he chose to
broaden his “war on terror” as far as possible. (97-104)

There are other famous and important instances of
“over-performing” in the history of American external relations.
One was James Monroe’s 1823 declaration that European powers
(France and Spain) should stay out of the Western Hemisphere. One
might think he was declaring this on the basis of new American
military power and new American resolve to defend the hemisphere.
Actually Monroe was simply aligning the United States with Great
Britain, which had just defeated France and itself wanted Spain and
Russia to stay out of the Americas. With its main imperial
interests elsewhere, Britain was happy to leave policing the
Americas to the USA. Monroe could take this initiative because the
only great power that could attack the USA was Britain, which had
no interest in doing so, so long as the USA did not challenge vital
British interests. Monroe took this initiative for domestic
political reasons: his Southeast dynasty of Jeffersonian presidents
from Virginia was gradually losing power to the rising West. Monroe
was maneuvering to retain power by coopting support from declining
Federalists in the Northeast, who supported an assertive foreign
policy (which the West opposed). (79-90)

Another famous and important instance of American geopolitical
“over-performance” was William McKinley’s 1898 decision to declare
war on Spain to seize its colonies – originally just Cuba, but
eventually also the Philippines. When McKinley took office in 1897,
he opposed war, for carefully calculated external and internal
reasons: he feared European intervention in Cuba and he feared
domestic opposition from his business support coalition. However,
by 1898 it was clear that Europeans would not intervene and
domestic business had begun to favor war. Moreover, to combat a
strong challenge from populist Democrats, a muscular Republican
foreign policy mobilized popular sentiment behind Republicans. That
reelected Republican McKinley in 1900 and elected his Republican
successor Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Meanwhile, the external
over-performance of McKinley and Roosevelt carried American
“imperialism” overseas. Having spent the 1800s conquering most of
North America, arguably the USA had now run out of continent to
conquer. (90-97)

BARELY PERFORMING: DIPLOMACY OF NECESSITY

If the external environment is quite threatening, but the
internal environment opposes external action, grand strategy is
likely to consist of temporizing maneuvers intended to minimize
external dangers. The country “barely performs” relative to
objective geopolitical demands. National leaders are doubly
constrained, by both external and internal forces.

For example, before the 1941 Japanese attack, in the late 1930s
Franklin Roosevelt had been unable to mobilize the USA against
rising threats in Europe and Asia. Not only were many Republicans
still isolationist, but many Democrats were as well – Democrats
whose support Roosevelt needed in order to pursue his domestic
objectives. From about 1936, Roosevelt considered the USA’s
external environment increasingly threatening, but congress limited
what he could do. So temporarily even he tried to “appease” Hitler.
By 1938 that clearly had failed, so Roosevelt switched to aiding
Britain and France against Germany (what Trubowitz calls
“buckpassing”). However, Roosevelt could increase such aid only
gradually, as Democrats only gradually became less isolationist.
Trubowitz notes that, throughout depression and war, Roosevelt
skillfully adjusted his external and internal strategies to
minimize conflict between the two. (64-74)

Another famous example of doubly constrained grand strategy in
American history was 1790s George Washington. He well knew that
America was still no military match for Britain and therefore must
avoid provoking a war with it. Besides, domestically, Washington
had sided with Hamilton’s “statist-developmentalist” domestic
coalition, which needed peace with Britain in order to pursue the
USA’s economic development. So Washington had to “appease” Britain
– just enough to avoid provoking it and no more – to avoid
provoking France. Washington called this appeasement “neutrality.”
(46-55)

A less well known but important example of doubly constrained
grand strategy was early 1860s Abraham Lincoln. He knew that
Britain was still the decisive global power and that therefore he
must not provoke Britain into intervening in the American Civil War
on the side of the South. Britain could easily have opened a
northern front from Canada, forcing the North to fight a two-front
war (north and south). Lincoln averted this by exempting British
ships from his naval blockade of the South. He gradually appealed
to anti-slavery sentiment in Brtiain – for example, through his
dramatic Emancipation Proclamation freeing southern slaves.
(55-64)

UNDER-PERFORMING: DIPLOMACY OF CHOICE

If the external environment is not threatening, and the internal
environment opposes external action, national leaders are likely to
avoid external action, even though the external environment would
have permitted it. Such leaders “under-perform” relative to
objective geopolitical opportunity. Often the reason is that such
leaders are constrained domestically.

The constraint may be that the leader knows that if he takes
external action it will create divisions in his domestic political
coalition. In the 1830s, Martin van Buren had been the architect of
the North-South Democratic political coalition that put Andrew
Jackson in the presidency. However, by the time that van Buren
succeeded Jackson as president, that coalition was under strain.
Events in Texas, Canada, and Maine gave van Buren opportunities for
external intervention. However, he eschewed intervention because it
would have further split Democrats. A grand strategy of
retrenchment created little opportunity for political gain, but it
avoided dangerous risks of political loss. (108-114)

Trubowitz argues that the situation of president Herbert Hoover
in the 1920s was similar. Before becoming president, Hoover had
already long been a committed and experienced internationalist.
Therefore many expected him to pursue an active foreign policy. In
the 1920s, the USA was quite geopolitically secure, which would
have permitted an ambitious foreign policy. Moreover, Hoover had
many opportunities for foreign intervention, particularly in Latin
America. However, no external threat required external action, and
Hoover eschewed external opportunities. The reason was that
Hoover’s Republican party was divided on most external issues.
Raising them would have further divided the party. So Hoover
downplayed foreign affairs, delaying the USA’s emergence as the
great power it already was and exacerbating the international
aspects of the Great Depression. (114-120)

In the 1990s and 2010s, Clinton and Obama both displayed many
characteristics of “retrenchment” external policy, such as
preferring diplomacy to defense and, within defense, ordering
missile strikes instead of deploying ground troops. Nevertheless,
Clinton and Obama pursued different versions of geopolitical
“under-performance,” variants that are significant, both
historically and analytically.

Clinton

In the 1990s, president Clinton provided a complex case. He
presided over an era of transition in both foreign affairs and
domestic politics, when both levels presented mixed readings on the
variables in Trubowitz’s model of how presidents choose their grand
strategies. As a result, the strategic result too was mixed. In
domestic politics, Clinton was famous for “triangulating” between
opposing positions: taking an intermediate stand, or alternating
between stands. Evidently he did somewhat the same in defense
policy. (120-127)

“Victory” over the Soviet Union in the Cold War had left the
United States in an unthreatening external environment that
ostensibly permitted the president to choose between activism and
passivism in foreign policy. However, it was not clear how long
that unthreatening environment would last. So Clinton received
mixed messages about the USA’s external situation. He did not
precipitously abandon Cold War defense arrangements.

Politically, Clinton and his Democrats favored attention to
domestic not foreign policy. Clinton did lower defense budgets, did
rely on diplomacy, and used force only through from-a-distance and
narrowly targeted “missile diplomacy.” On the other hand, Clinton’s
domestic political situation was not strong, even among Democrats.
Moreover, he was trying to govern as a Democratic president in an
era mostly dominated by conservative Republicans. Clinton managed
Republican challenges in complex ways (more behind-the-scenes
cooperation with Republicans than was visible at the time).
Republicans demanded external activism.

The upshot of these cross-pressures was that in foreign policy,
under a rationale of “selective engagement,” Clinton did as little
as possible as late as possible. Nothing he did was either
completely active or completely passive. Moreover, on successive
foreign policy issues, he in effect alternated between activism and
passivism!

For the post-cold war “sole superpower,” the external
environment remained basically unthreatening, at least in terms of
the conventional threats from national states that would induce one
to go to war with whole countries. To consolidate the support of
his domestic mass coalition and to maximize his dominance of
domestic political elites, Bush had chosen a maximalist response to
“terror,” invading whole countries. To relieve Americans’
war-weariness and shift resources toward economic recovery and
social programs, in external defense Obama chose to narrow his
targets and attack them from afar with precision weapons.

Obama has displayed the same strategic modesty in response to
other geopolitical challenges: in the Middle East, the Far East,
and now in Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, Obama has pressed
for a diplomatic solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, maintained
ties with all sides as the “Arab spring” first warmed and then
cooled, “led from behind” in Libya, and declined direct military
intervention in Syria. In the Far East, Obama may be “pivoting”
toward balancing China, but direct confrontation would be
inconsistent with his Retrenchment grand strategy. In Eastern
Europe, Russian seizure of parts of Ukraine poses the greatest
foreign challenge during Obama’s presidency, and the deepest crisis
in global geopolitics since the end of the Cold War. Obama’s
response remains in line with his overall Grand Strategy: no
immediate direct military intervention, instead gradual indirect
economic pressure. Whether that will much affect Russian behavior –
at least under the adventurist leadership of Vladimir Putin – seems
doubtful.

For more on American Grand Strategy, including by region, see
Post 130309.

总访问量：博主简介

韦爱德Edwin A. Winckler (韦爱德) is an American political scientist (Harvard BA, MA, and PhD) who has taught mostly in the sociology departments at Columbia and Harvard. He has been researching China for a half century, publishing books about Taiwan’s political economy (Sharpe, 1988), China’s post-Mao reforms (Rienner, 1999), and China’s population policy (Stanford, 2005, with Susan Greenhalgh). Recently he has begun also explaining American politics to Chinese. So the purpose of this Blog is to call attention to the best American media commentary on current American politics and to relate that to the best recent American academic scholarship on American politics. Winckler’s long-term institutional base remains the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University in New York City. However he and his research have now retreated to picturesque rural Central New York.